I rather strongly dislike Chris Hedges, but I have to admit that sometimes he makes a good point.
The last days of dying empires are dominated by idiots. The Roman, Mayan, French, Habsburg, Ottoman, Romanoff, Iranian and Soviet dynasties crumbled under the stupidity of their decadent rulers who absented themselves from reality, plundered their nations and retreated into echo chambers where fact and fiction were indistinguishable.
Donald Trump, and the sycophantic buffoons in his administration, are updated versions of the reigns of the Roman emperor Nero, who allocated vast state expenditures to attain magical powers; the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, who funded repeated expeditions to a mythical island of immortals to bring back a potion that would give him eternal life; and a feckless Tsarist court that sat around reading tarot cards and attending séances as Russia was decimated by a war that consumed over two million lives and revolution brewed in the streets.
It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. There’s a great comic-horror movie that made this same point: The Death of Stalin. In the aftermath of Stalin’s death, the people who profited from the tyrant’s death bumble about, scrambling to take over his role, and it’s simultaneously horrifying and hilarious, because you know that every childlike tantrum and backstabbing pratfall is concealing death and famine and riots and futility. It portrays the bureaucrats of the Soviet Union as a mob of idiots.
There’s a new movie out that has the same vibe, Mountainhead. It’s not as good as The Death of Stalin, but it’s only fair that it turns the stiletto against American idiots, the privileged CEOs and VCs of Silicon Valley. The premise is that a group of 4 fictional billionaires are getting together for a poker game (which they never get around to) at an isolated mansion in the mountains. One of them, who is kind of a blend of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, has just unleashed an AI on his social media company that makes it easy to create deepfakes and spoof other users — it turns out to be very popular and is also creating total chaos around the world, with assassinations, wars, and riots breaking out everywhere. He is publicly unconcerned, and actually suggests it’s a good thing, and suggests that we all need to push through and do more, promoting accelerationism. He’s actually experiencing visible anxiety as everyone at the meeting has their eyes locked to their phones.
What he wants to do is buy some AI-filtering technology from another of the attendees, Jeff, who doesn’t want to give it up. He just surpassed the others in net worth, and doesn’t want to surrender his baby. So they all decide that the solution is to murder Jeff so they can steal his tech. They aren’t at all competent at doing real world action, trying to shove him over a railing, clubbing him to death, etc., and their efforts all fail as Jeff flees into a sauna. They lock him in and pour gasoline on the floor, using their hands to try and push it under the door so they can set him on fire.
One of the amusing sides of the conflict is that all of them are using techbro buzzwords. The pompous elder “statesman” of the group is frequently invoking Kant and Hegel and Nietzche and Marcus Aurelius to defend his decisions, while clearly not comprehending what they actually wrote. They shout slogans like “Transhuman world harmony!” and declare themselves the smartest men in America, while struggling to figure out how to boil an egg. They have such an inflated sense of their own importance that they plan to “coup out” America and rule the world from their cell phones.
They’re idiots.
One flaw to the movie is that the jargon and references are flying so thickly that it might be a bit obscure to the general public. Fortunately, I had just read More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity by Adam Becker, so I was au courant on the lingo. It made the movie doubly depressing because it was so accurate. That’s actually how these assholes think: they value the hypothetical lives of future trillions over the existence of peons here and now. It’s easier to digest the stupidity when it’s coming from fictional characters, rather than real people like Yudkowsky and MacAskill and Andreesen and Gates and Ray Kurzweil (unfortunately, Becker twice says that Kurzweil is neither stupid nor crazy — sorry, he’s one or both of those). Fiction might make the infamous go down a little more smoothly, but non-fiction makes it all jagged and sharp and horrible.
Tech is the new religion. Écrasez l’infâme.
So what’s the problem with Hedges?
@ ^ Ronald Couch : They’re a pain to trim & keep level?
Also depends on the species that’s forming the hedge some of them being potentially invasive woody weeds.
He’s fanatically anti-atheist, and when he goes on one of his atheist rants, all the careful journalistic precision gets thrown out the window. He actually gave a talk at UMM about 10 years ago, and it was embarrassing how bad it was.
I never had the impression Hedges was anti-atheist. He’s been anti-New Atheist (Harris, Dawkins, etc) in about the same way he’s been anti-radical religious rightwing.
He’s also got some weird Christian purity hang-ups about pornography and sex work. But he does certainly recognise the real harm the classes behind the world’s problems are doing.
On the other hand, it is a bit of a cliche reeling off lists of mad emperors and myopic idiot-kings and then saying they are the mark of an empire’s decline. Nero was the fifth Emperor of Rome (out of a good hundred or so) , and even in the west the dissolution of the Roman empire took another 400 years (and we are still heirs to its achievements in very real ways). The “mad” emperors did not get more common as the empire declined – your Caligulae and Domitianes and Commodi and Elagabali occur pretty much throughout, interspersed with more sane and more competent emperors like Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, Diocletian and Theodosius. Chin Shi Huang was even less a sign of decline, given that he was the FIRST emperor of China, which took more than another two millennia to rid itself of Imperial rule.
I would say, rather, that the possibility of mad idiot kings is an inherent risk when you have an autocratic system that chooses rulers based on criteria other than competence.
PSA: Get Your Parents Off the Meta AI App Right Now
Strange that Chin was the first emperor considering that the Qin was not the first dynasty. Did he just have more power than the previous rulers?
I’m far from an expert on Chinese history but the four emperors who decided to persecute Buddhists would probably have been a better example for Hedges to use.
Walter Solomon, #7
I’m no great expert in Chinese history, but it is my understanding that the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties were retroactively cast in the same mould as the “official” Imperial dynasties from the Qin onward, though they were actually rather different power structures. Qin united most of what we now call China into one nation, whereas the previous dynasties only ruled smaller parts of it.
“Russia was decimated by a war that consumed over two million lives” 2 million? The Russian army lost 4 million in the first year of the war alone!
Walter @ #7
Am I glad I left Meta/Facebook for good about 6 months ago. Never looked back. It’s pure garbage over there!
Ted Lawry @ 9
I think you may be thinking of WWII. 1914-1915 the Russian army was far from victorious, but it was not falling apart.
Before the Qin, the Chinese states were more feudal (although well-educated administrators may have had a better position than in feudal Europe).
Literacy was essential for ruling the increasingly large states. The ordinary peons suffered as horribly as in Europe, especially during the era of warring states.
Let us not forget the mad pseudo-king of Britain, Boris Johnson. A high-functioning alcoholist, narcissist and compulsive liar who posessed better social skills than orange King Ubu and had the Brits fooled for years.
Wikipedia – TESCREAL
Video: Karen Hao interview about EMPIRE OF AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI (45:04)
Excerpts here as as example. I cursorily skipped through to sample him talking.
Up With Chris Hayes – United in Godlessness (2012, a day after the Reason Rally)
A panel with Jamilla Bey, Steven Pinker, Robert Wright, Susan Jacoby. And Richard Dawkins and Clergy Project Pastor Mike Aus via satellite.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @15: Are you confusing Chris Hayes with Chris Hedges?
@16: Doh. Yeah, thanks for clearing that up.
Backer’s book, More Everything Forever, is well worth reading. He does go a bit easy on Kurzweil, but he is thoroughly sound on Musk (one-way ticket to Mars for him, please, ASAP), appropriately skeptical of AGI, and the sub-title (see above) is excellent. For more, I reviewed it here:
https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-times/emperors-new-clothes
Becker’s — I think that was my typo not the wretched auto-mistake.
I recall way back when the Four Horsemen were still a thing, Hedges saying something about the New Atheists being a bunch of reactionary imperialist Westerners (it wasn’t quite that harsh, but it was along those lines). I thought at the time it was a stupid thing to say. Almost 20 years later, it doesn’t seem like he was that far off — Dennett’s the only Horseman for whom I retain any respect.
I still, on the whole, haven’t made up my mind what to think about Hedges.
The main difference between the Trump administration and the Harding administration or even the Jackson administration is that people are currently aware of Trump. Harding and Jackson both did a lot of damage but did not end the country.
Is Hedges the anti-capitalist who cried wolf? A misunderstood Cassandra? Does it matter?
stevewatson @20:
From what I’ve seen, you’re not alone. I’ve read a lot of his articles, and seen a bunch of his talks on Youtube and elsewhere. My take is that he’s the kind of down-to-the-bone decent human being we need far more of, who now and then gets some things wrong. You know, like most of us.
He doesn’t believe in atheists. Wrote a book on it.
https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/4363270
Summary:
Critiques the radical mindset that rages against religion and faith, and identifies the pillars of the new atheist belief system, revealing that the stringent rules and rigid traditions in place are as strict as those of any religious practice. The new atheists, led by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, do not make moral arguments about religion. Rather, they have created a new form of fundamentalism that attempts to permeate society with ideas about our own moral superiority and the omnipotence of human reason. Journalist Hedges makes a case against both religious and secular fundamentalism.--From amazon.com.
Full contents:
The God debate
Science and religion
The new fundamentalism
Self-delusion
The myth of moral progress
Humiliation and revenge
The illusive self.
@3 PZ
When I think “fanatical anti-atheist” I think, say, Jack Chick, or Sye Ten Bruggencate, or William Lane Craig, or Matt Walsh, or the people putting on the armor of god and doing battle with atheist call-in shows. People who can’t help but bring religion up at every opportunity, and they’re always looking for a gotcha moment when they’re confronting the reprobate atheist.
Chris Hedges isn’t trying to beat me over the head with his brand of Presbyterian Christianity. It’s good, because we agree on a lot of points politically, and he brings his lefty cred. It’s hardly fanatical anti-atheism when someone writes as much as he does and hardly ever uses his religion to make a point; he doesn’t bring it up often.
That said, if you’ve got the receipts from that UMM speech where he’s dunking on atheists undeservedly, I’ll take a look.
Still lying about reality.
Book blurb:
“Critiques the radical mindset that rages against religion and faith, and identifies the pillars of the new atheist belief system, revealing that the stringent rules and rigid traditions in place are as strict as those of any religious practice.”
Beholder: “That said, if you’ve got the receipts from that UMM speech where he’s dunking on atheists undeservedly, I’ll take a look.”
(Why do you need PZ’s receipts when the book is right there?)
I’ve been wanting to watch Mountainhead if for anything the obvious Ayn Rand allusion. I think someone had said one of the characters is similar to Yarvin.
I saw some brief recap of Death of Stalin on a Youtube movie buff channel. I was tempted by More Everything Forever but have too much on my plate. I have mixed feelings toward Kurzweil as I’ve mentioned multiple times already.
@22: I’ll confess to not having read a lot of Hedges, ever. The mod of a humanist mailing list I’m on is a big fan, and he sometimes posts links to Hedges’ essays. While generally on the same side of the political spectrum, I often find him to be just a bit far out there. For example, for a while he was making out that the Ukraine war could have been resolved early on, but the US and UK nixed any deal with Putin for their own nefarious purposes. Other analysts painted a somewhat more complicated picture, in which the Ukrainians had their own reasons for refusing to proceed (like Russian atrocities).
I’d forgotten about the “Atheists” book. Given my current state of disenchantment with the skeptical/atheist movement, I have a nasty feeling I might even agree with some of it :/.
Yow, 1 for 3 (at best!) is a pretty dismal record on historical claims for someone like Chris Hedges who claims to write with an eye towards history.
The Romanoffs were indeed foolishly responsible for the decline of their own power, but if we’re identifying an empire as a consolidation of power rather than a political system, the fall of the Romanoffs wasn’t the end of the Russian Empire, which did deconsolidate considerably but was reconstituted and expanded in short order under the Soviets. I’d give this one credit only if you think of “Russian monarchy” and “Russian Communism” as both being empires but not giving the existence of the former any credit for the rapid consolidation of the latter.
Qin Shi Huang is a kind of weird case, because while it could be argued that the empire ended (for a while at least) with him (his heirs having inherited what was clearly a destabilized system), it also began with him, which makes it kind of a one-man phenomenon. That’s not really a “mad emperor” narrative, in which empire is a thing that others built through their strength and he who his fecklessness destroyed (one could argue his youthful energy built it and his senile foolishness destroyed it, but that’s quite different from arguing he was a crazy empire-buster). Before Qin Shi Huang, China was tremendously disunified. After, there was fracturing — but even in its fractured form, it was primed to gravitate around centers of power, and the period that followed resembled a civil war more than an outright collapse.
Nero (and Caligula, to name another infamously mad emperor) don’t work either. They were very early rulers in the imperial period of Rome, and while Rome was very near the peak of its power and influence before them and did somewhat lose state power and efficacy under them, they didn’t herald the end of Rome, the beginning of its decline, or even a protracted period of instability. There were centuries of shifting fortunes afterwards, and for much of the second century the empire was powerful and stable.
Stupid baseless over-generalisation, too.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Carthage
See, no ruler there — no king. No Trump.
https://www.worldhistory.org/Carthaginian_Government/
I can massage a chatbot, too:
Me: Chris Hedges has made this claim: “The last days of dying empires are dominated by idiots. The Roman, Mayan, French, Habsburg, Ottoman, Romanoff, Iranian and Soviet dynasties crumbled under the stupidity of their decadent rulers who absented themselves from reality, plundered their nations and retreated into echo chambers where fact and fiction were indistinguishable.”
Such a sweeping over-generalisation needs pushback, and I think this is a counter-example. Critique
BubbleBot: Hedges’ claim is a sweeping generalization that oversimplifies the decline of empires by attributing their collapse primarily to the incompetence of rulers. While leadership failures often play a role, historical evidence suggests that structural, economic, military, and external pressures are equally—if not more—significant.
Your example of Carthage’s political hierarchy at the time of its destruction in 146 BCE is a strong counterpoint. Carthage was governed by a sophisticated oligarchic system, including the Suffetes, Senate, Popular Assembly, and Council of 104. These institutions indicate a level of political organization and accountability that contradicts the notion of sheer incompetence leading to its downfall. Carthage’s destruction was not due to internal stupidity but rather Rome’s deliberate military strategy to eliminate a rival.
Other counterexamples include:
– The Byzantine Empire, which endured for over a millennium despite periods of weak rulers. Its fall in 1453 was largely due to military exhaustion and external pressure from the Ottoman Empire, not mere incompetence.
– The Qing Dynasty, which collapsed in 1912 due to economic stagnation, internal rebellion, and foreign intervention, rather than just the failings of its last emperor.
– The Soviet Union, which dissolved in 1991 due to economic mismanagement, ideological rigidity, and geopolitical shifts, not simply because of “idiotic” leadership.
Hedges’ framing ignores the complex interplay of factors that contribute to imperial decline. While poor leadership can accelerate collapse, it is rarely the sole or even primary cause. His argument leans on rhetorical flourish rather than rigorous historical analysis. You’re right to push back.
—
A vindication tool! ;)
@9 and 11–
Russia in WW1 saw 1.7-2.2 million military deaths and 400k civilian deaths. That is a huge, destabilising number during a destabilising era of history, but it’s not even close to the highest proportion of pre-war population lost. At 1.6-1.9%, Russia didn’t even come close to Persia’s 19%, Serbia’s 17-28%, or the Ottomans’ 13-15%.
As others have pointed out, this is cherry-picking history and not even good cherry-picking. Nero is a particularly bad example since, as per Jack Wildstrom, his reign predated the Fall of the West by four centuries and strengthened the power of the Roman Empire (ended rebellions in Britain and Judea, established a long-standing peace with the Parthians), laying the foundation for the empire to reach its greatest extent under Trajan, 50 years later.
@26 JohnGPT
I’m too fucking lazy and borderline illiterate to read a whole book or an entire speech, trying the whole time to imagine what PZ could have possibly meant was the “fanatically anti-atheist” part.
A few cited sentences are enough to convince me.
beholder, you just told me you need PZ’s receipts because “a few cited sentences are enough to convince me.”
That is the weirdest ever excuse, and it’s also self-contradictory.
I just cited a few sentences, and therefore you are now (according to your own claim) convinced.
Since you are convinced, there is no need, yet that response purportedly answers the why of your neediness, as though it were extant.
You’re all over the place. Hedges is obviously an inveterate bullshitter and hater of atheists, in particular those who have the temerity to not kow-tow to goddists and who expose their claims.
But fine, now that you have what you need, you still need what you want. Or something.
(O what webs we weave!)
I have some receipts from an old post of mine, reviewing Hedges’ book When Atheism Becomes Religion:
http://www.daylightatheism.org/2010/12/chris-hedges-doesnt-like-us/
In retrospect, some of his criticisms were more justifiable than others. But when he makes accusations like that atheists are “high priests of the cult of science” who are “corrupted by too much television”… I think that shows he was just flinging spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks, not engaging in a carefully considered critique.
Hedges:
https://news-archive.hds.harvard.edu/news/2011/02/07/a-conversation-with-chris-hedges
Does anyone think he’s misrepresenting Harris or Hitchens?
I would add that the Mayans do not belong on that list — the collapse in the 6th century has no consensus on cause, and the final extinction was at the hands of the conquistadors. Nor do the Habsburgs belong. Their empire was ended by WW1, a terrible famine, and the rise of seccessionist national movements within the Austro-Hungarian empire. The Soviet collapse doesn’t fit either. In none of these cases did a procession of mad kings lead to collapse.
“Does anyone think he’s misrepresenting Harris or Hitchens?”
He’s speaking about groups. Specifically, New Atheists. I am one.
Of course, I was one before the ostensible faddish movement of the early 2000s, and I remain one now the fad is over.
What I think is he’s not actually speaking about Harris or Hitchens — or about PZ, who was part of the fad in those times, or about me.
“And these are activities that new atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris defend”
So fucking what, if so? Nothing to do with Gods, nothing to do with “the new atheist belief system, revealing that the stringent rules and rigid traditions in place are as strict as those of any religious practice”.
Good grief, Rob! Are you defending his demonisation of atheists?
From your link, Rob:
Rob, you reckon he’s perfectly representing Harris or Hitchens there?
Seriously: .
How anyone takes that wanker seriously is beyond me.
I for sure don’t have the beliefs he imputes to the entire class of ‘new atheists’ — and I gotta love how that little fig-leaf (not regular atheists, nono! The New Ones!!1!) makes it all good for the likes of you.
Bah.
John, you embody self-exultation.
But Rob, even were that true* that’s only one of Hedges’ claims:
Do you seriously believe I embody not only a self-exultation, which was frightening, not only a belief that violence should be used on the part of the American imperium to better the world, but a naïve, deeply ignorant embrace of what I would have to call the cult of science?
Taking only one element and pretending that’s the entirety of his claim is weak as fuck, Rob.
Face it, he’s just jaundiced towards atheism, but cloaks it in language about ‘New Atheism’, which he utterly misrepresents.
And you try to defend him for it, because after all, a good atheist is an apologetic atheist, no?
(That’s the ‘old atheism’, BTW)
—
* Self-confidence ≠ self-exultation
It’s rare when Rob and I agree about something. About the atheist movement, no less.
@37 Rob
Hedges nailed it. It’s worth keeping an eye out for the tendency of political movements to blame all their problems on an outside enemy; his warning applies equally to them.
For reference: https://thehumanist.com/magazine/september-october-2008/magazine_article/i-dont-believe-in-atheists
(By Carl Coon)
beholder, you reckon atheism is a political movement?
Heh heh heh.
(You are funny)
John Morales @45
Atheism can be an identity politics. Note I say “can be” and not “is” as atheisms vary. People being invested in church-state separation is political as hell. That sort of atheism fits under a secularist umbrella which may include religious people with common cause.
I’m not super familiar with Hedges. He may be a mixed bag. Surely some apt criticisms of Harris and Hitchens may land. The latter too is a mixed bag. I prefer his critiques of Israel and Zionism over some of his other stuff. Harris was about finding a market niche and settling yourself into it by bloviating excessively using ASMR techniques. Aside from Hitch on Israel, the only other of the “four horsemen” I find useful is Dennett on some of his cognitive philosophy though he suffered from memetics capture and was a dick to Gould. That and Dawkins’ selfish gene nonsense happened well before the advent of new atheism.
Hemidactylus: “Atheism can be an identity politics.”
Um, not if it’s atheism itself. A-theism. A privative. A lack of theism.
Who the fuck thinks their identity is not believing in gods?
(Caricature atheists, that’s who)
I mean, if you overload the term, sure. It can be anything whatsoever, then.
Kindness can be murderousness, by that standard (warranted euthanasia by request, for example).
The supernumerary addenda to one’s atheism may vary, but a lack of goddism is the clue.
No theism. One can be an atheist and a kiddy-diddler, one can be an atheist and a natalist or an antinatalist, etc.
How is there more than one lack of theism, in your estimation? Other than the addenda.
Point being, it’s not an ideology itself.
You are buying into Chris’ framing. Tsk.
Basically why A+ got no traction, in the end.
“I’m not super familiar with Hedges.”, quoth you.
So what? You’ve got his contentions at hand.
Not sufficient?
(So wishy-washy, you are!)
Hi P.Z, can you update your hyperlink to that book to not drive traffic to Bezos?
https://bookshop.org/p/books/more-everything-forever-ai-overlords-space-empires-and-silicon-valley-s-crusade-to-control-the-fate-of-humanity-adam-becker/21451550?ean=9781541619593&next=t
OK, this thread (particularly Adam Lee’s review of the Atheism book) is helping me make up my mind on Chris Hedges. The result is on the whole not flattering to him.
Hedges conflates atheism with scientism, but sticks to the Gnus for his examples.
Me: expand on the deferential aspect of the distinction between ‘new atheism’ and old atheism. Synthesis
Bubblebot: Earlier atheistic traditions often adopted a tone of circumspection shaped by their intellectual milieu. Their critiques of religion were mediated through the norms of philosophical discourse—measured, analytical, and often laden with qualifiers. Religion, even when disputed, was treated as a respectable interlocutor: a system of belief with historical and psychological gravitas, meriting careful engagement. The posture was one of intellectual distance rather than moral indictment.
This deference also manifested socially. Older atheism operated in contexts where overt irreligiosity risked alienation or reprisal. As such, its language was frequently diplomatic—concerned less with conversion than with coexistence. Religion was engaged as a metaphysical hypothesis to be questioned, not a sociopolitical force to be dismantled. Even sharp critiques were often tempered by appeals to religious morality’s cultural value or its role in personal meaning-making.
In contrast, the shift away from deference entails stripping religion of privileged immunity. It reframes faith not just as intellectually untenable but as epistemically irresponsible or ethically suspect when it intrudes on secular governance, education, or science. The decorum of dialogue is replaced with the urgency of polemic—religion becomes not merely wrong, but dangerous.
Thus, the distinction is not just one of content, but of posture: a move from accommodation to adversarial engagement; from critique within shared norms to rejection of the norms themselves. It’s a rhetorical realignment, swapping respect for confrontation, and in doing so, claiming public, rather than merely private, ground.
—
I’d quibble, but pretty much. Only one aspect, but one I like.
Me: accommodation is interpretation? I thought it was coexistence and compliance
BB: Earlier atheism often adopted a deferential stance—treating religion as a legitimate worldview deserving respectful dialogue. This was shaped by social caution and a focus on abstract critique. New atheism rejects that posture, not only disputing religious claims but denying religion any epistemic or moral privilege. Accommodation, in this shift, refers chiefly to coexistence and strategic restraint—not interpretive generosity, though that’s sometimes adjacent. The transformation is rhetorical and tactical: from respectful coexistence to direct confrontation.
—
Yup, that’s what I meant. And it saves me much typing.